Sock it to Me (episode #1557)

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Hey, Grant, thank you so much for sending me that collection of slang from the sporting news in the 19, what was it, 1933?

Oh, yeah, the baseball slang from 1933.

I knew you’d love that.

It’s just a thing we like to say back and forth, isn’t it?

I know.

Baseball is just this endless repository of fantastic slang.

It’s so poetic.

I love, for example, fishing trip, which is swinging at a bad ball.

He took a fishing trip.

Yeah, that’s totally what they’re doing.

They’re just like throwing the bad out there, just kind of trying to hit any junk that comes their way.

Right.

And sometimes they end up with a line drive to the catcher.

That’s when they miss the third strike.

A line drive to the catcher.

Yeah, that’s awesome.

Yeah, but somebody who’s really good is going to pour on the pine.

They’re going to hit that ball really solidly.

Pour on the pine.

Pour on the pine.

And one that really jumped out at me was the term collisions.

Oh, yeah.

I think we’ve mentioned that on the show before.

That’s an intentional, jokey mispronunciation of collegian, referring to college-level baseball players who often think they’re hot stuff when they come up to the show or the big time, the big leagues.

So they kind of get teased and made fun of.

Yeah, well, maybe we can talk some more about baseball slang later in the show.

Absolutely.

And, you know, we’ve got a lot of sports players who listen to the show by radio and podcast.

Send us your stuff.

We’d love to hear what they talk about in your league or your game, 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org or tell us about the sport you play @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Michael from Trophy Club, Texas.

From Texas.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Listen, here’s my question.

I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.

My Italian grandmother always had a saying.

Whenever she wanted to say yes, she would say, you bet your bippy.

So, actually, I’ve got a few questions.

One, what is a bippy?

Two, what is the value of a bippy?

Three, do I have a bippy?

Four, why would I want to bet it?

And five, if I were to lose my bippy in a wager, what would it cost me to replace it?

Oh, Michael.

Well, I think we can help you with that.

This has been growing for a long time.

We can definitely help your bipping.

Yeah.

Now, did you say this was your mother or your grandmother?

My grandmother.

Your grandmother.

Okay.

Okay.

Are you old enough to remember variety shows from the 1960s by any chance?

Unfortunately, I am, yes.

Well, there was a wacky variety show that was appointment listening for our family called Laugh-In back in the day.

Do you remember that one?

I remember Laugh-In well.

The guy in the tricycle.

Yeah, yeah.

The guy who would ride the tricycle in his raincoat and fall over.

Goldie Hawn, Lily Tomlin.

Goldie Hawn.

Buzzy.

Yeah, she’d jump at the little wall.

Yeah, yeah.

Judy Karn.

Yeah, they had what they called a joke wall, which was sort of like an advent calendar where all these little doors would open and people would just stick their heads out and say one-liners.

And it was really crazy, really goofy.

When I think of it, I just think of all these psychedelic colors and patterns and go-go boots and people dancing and that kind of thing.

And Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, which aired in the late 1960s on Monday nights, I think, spawned a whole lot of catchphrases like, what you see is what you get, and the devil made me do it.

Right.

And sock it to me.

You remember Richard Nixon?

That beautiful downtown Burbank.

Yeah.

Yeah, Richard Nixon.

Do you remember this?

Richard Nixon was actually on that show saying, sock it to me.

Oh, that’s right.

I do remember that.

Just briefly.

Blow in my ear and I’ll follow you anywhere.

And relevant to our show, look that up in your Funkin’ Wagnalls.

Oh, yeah.

Right.

It was just this crazy hour of goofy 60s fun.

And one of the phrases in there was, you bet your sweet Bippy.

Dick Martin, the comedian, used to say that.

And as you might guess, Bippy was sort of a euphemism for, you know, your derriere, your tuchus.

You bet your sweet bippy.

So indeed you do have one, Michael, I assume.

Betting is you can win or lose.

It almost seems like yes or no.

Yeah, but it’s another one of those things that comes from the American fascination with gambling.

We have all these words in our culture that come from gambling.

So it’s just kind of an over-the-top hyperbolic response when you should just be saying yes.

You say, you betcha.

You betcha, sweet ass, I do.

Got it.

Well, that makes way more sense.

Thank you very much for answering my question, and I will keep my bippy where it is.

Take care.

Michael, thanks for calling.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Okay. Very interesting.

And that’s the truth.

They talked about it on the show, what the meaning of bippy was.

There was an exchange between Martin and Rowan, and Martin says, you bet your sweet bippy I would.

And Rowan says, I’ve been meaning to ask you, what’s a bippy?

And Martin says, it’s a baby bip.

And Rowan says, yeah, but what’s a bip?

And Martin says, a big bippy.

And Rowan says, are you sure?

And Martin says, you bet your sweet bippy, I’m sure.

So it’s just a totally nonsense word that everyone, as far as we know, came up with.

They came up with it.

It didn’t exist before they said it.

Oh, that show was such a hoot.

Sparkle, Sparkle, and Furr Burfel.

It was like a firework.

It burned brightly, and then it was gone.

I just keep picturing the colors, you know, magenta and chartreuse and orange.

And that fast-paced editing that later became pretty standard for television.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you could just have one person stick their head out of a window and say one word, and it was just hilarious.

Well, whether you’re in beautiful downtown Burbank or you want us to look something up in our Funkin’ Wagnalls, you can give us a call, 877-929-9673, or email us, words@waywordradio.org.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Bart from Winslow, Indiana.

Well, what’s on your mind, Bart?

Well, I’ve been umpiring baseball a long time, and I’ve always heard a can of corn for routine fly ball and had no idea what corn and baseball had together.

Can of corn for routine fly ball. What level of sport do you umpire in?

I’ve umpired anywhere from eight-year-olds up through college level.

30 years, you said? That’s a long haul.

It’s the best thing you can do to get paid.

Really?

Yeah, a day in the grass.

So a can of corn in baseball, you said it’s an ordinary pop fly?

Yeah, just an ordinary, routine fly ball to the outfield.

But one that’s easy to catch, right?

Correct.

Okay, gotcha.

There are a bunch of theories on this.

This is a widespread term.

It’s kind of gone in and out of fashion over the years.

It’s funny when you look back through the sporting news or baseball writers over the decades since the term first appeared in the 1920s or maybe even earlier.

Somebody is always declaring, you know, can of corn is outdated slang and nobody should use it.

And yet it still keeps sticking around.

They said it in the 40s, they said it in the 50s, they said it in the 70s, and people are still using it.

One of the most common theories about why it’s called a can of corn is because it’s this big, heavy, obvious thing that’s really easy to catch.

Like if I were to toss you a can of corn, no matter how good my arm is, I can’t get a lot of speed on it, and you’re going to probably catch it, right?

It’s just going to be really easy to catch.

It’s just an obvious, easy-to-see thing.

Another idea is that supposedly it comes from the way that canned goods would be stacked in the old days in grocery stores, you know, with these tall shelves behind the shopkeeper where you wouldn’t pick up your own groceries, but the shopkeeper would use this hooked pole to kind of nudge the cans down from the high shelves.

And then they would catch them either by hand or in a big shop apron.

And so the can of corn baseball kind of looks like that canned good coming down to the shopkeeper.

And then there are other theories, but those are the ones that have the best information behind them.

All right.

Make sense?

Well, I’m glad to know that.

Yeah, I had no idea.

I was talking around whether it was when canned goods came out and you didn’t have to work so hard to get your corn or not.

I kind of had that idea.

Well, there’s a thought.

You don’t have to shuck the thing or cook it.

You just grab the can of corn.

Oh, that’s funny.

Well, that reminds me, another theory is that, and I kind of like this one too, because you know that particular sound that when the bat hits the ball just right and you just know it’s going to be a pop fly even before you see it go up, like that kerplunk sound?

Some people think that sounds like a can of corn being hit.

So some people think that’s why it’s called a can of corn.

Okay.

Bart, let me ask you while I got you on the line.

Have you ever heard that also called a rainmaker?

No, I haven’t.

Okay, because that was an old-fashioned term for it, and I just didn’t know if it still had any currency.

The idea with the pop-by being called a rainmaker is it went up so high that it brushed the clouds and caused the rain to come down.

Yeah, I’ve heard that, but not on the routine fly ball.

Those are usually the ones that are just really hit really, really high.

Well, nowadays I think more people just say, hey, you’re going to bring the rain with that one.

You know, I heard that.

Oh, gotcha.

There’s so much great baseball language.

You’re going to have to call us again with some more, okay?

Yes, please.

Can we get you to do that?

I sure will.

Okay.

Well, thank you so much.

All right.

Keep it clean out there, Bart.

All right.

Take care.

Thank you.

Bye.

You know, speaking of sounds, I’m pretty sure that when aluminum bats started to become popular, I remember the columnist George Will really hating aluminum bats and saying, if the sound of aluminum bats was an object, it would be a can of lima beans or something like that.

He did not like aluminum bats.

And he’s a big baseball fan, of course.

But it was something like that.

Like an aluminum bat is the sound of lima beans.

I always felt that the wood versus aluminum argument in baseball-like sports was very similar to the vinyl versus CD argument in music.

Oh, that’s really interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah, there’s nothing like that feeling and that sound when it just cracks, you know, right in the right spot.

Well, we’ve got a lot of people playing sports.

Even during the pandemic, people will find a way to get out there.

And whether it’s disc golf or billiards or games you play on the beach, give us a call.

Tell us your lingo, 877-929-9673.

Email words@waywordradio.org or share it with the world on Twitter @wayword.

Here’s another bit of baseball slang, horse collar.

Do you know this term?

C-O-L-L-A-R, horse collar?

Vaguely familiar?

Catch me up.

Well, you know, a horse collar is round, right?

It’s just one big loop.

And so if you horse collar somebody, you hold them to zero.

So it’s a goose egg.

Exactly.

It’s a goose egg or like in tennis when you bagel somebody.

It’s that shape that looks like a zero, a horse collar.

So if the Yankees horse collar the Mets, they’ve kept them to zero.

Exactly.

877-929-9673.

More about what we say and why we say it as A Way with Words continues.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

And joining us now from New York City is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

Hey, John.

Hey, Martha.

Hello, Grant.

Hi, Bob.

Today’s quiz is very much a straightforward trivia quiz, but you don’t have to know much to do well.

You don’t have to know anything.

You have to know nothing because it seems nothing is everywhere.

For example, it was originally pitched as a sitcom about how a comedian gets his material, but a later in-joke in the show led many to believe that what show is about nothing?

Seinfeld.

Of course, Seinfeld, sure.

So this is all stuff about nothing, and it relates to words.

You’ll see.

Okay, yeah.

The name of what very early science fiction character from an 1870 novel is Latin for nobody.

Modern listeners are perhaps much more familiar with the lost fish of the same name.

Nemo.

Oh, yes.

Captain Nemo.

Captain Nemo.

Literally nobody.

Now, Jules Verne cannot be accused of laziness in naming his submarine captain, though.

It’s more likely he was inspired by Utis, a pseudonym used by what title character to outwit a cyclops?

Odysseus.

Odysseus, yes.

In what work?

The Odyssey.

In the Odyssey, right.

Now, we’re going to move from people to places.

Though it is only the third least densely populated, what U.S. State is the only one that can be accurately described as MT?

Montana?

Montana.

Why would that be, Martha?

Because the abbreviation for it is MT.

Is MT, right.

Now, what band’s name literally means blowing out or quenching in Sanskrit.

In the Buddhist context, it refers to the ultimate goal of non-self or emptiness attained by escaping the cycle of rebirth.

Is it nirvana?

It is nirvana, yes. It means like blowing out a candle, nirvana.

Finally, we’ll bring this quiz about nothing back around into a big zero with a question about Seinfeld.

On the TV series Seinfeld, what quality is shared by the characters Bob Sacamano, Lomez, and Cousin Jeffrey?

Nothing. They have nothing in common.

That’s a great answer.

But they do have something in common.

All played by the same actor.

Are they imaginary? Do they never appear on screen?

They never appear on screen and they are never seen.

I don’t know about imaginary doesn’t quite make it, but they are referred to.

I didn’t watch that far.

But never seen.

Of course, the most famous unseen character in literature and plays and movies is…

Godot.

Godot. Big zero there. He never shows up.

Well, that’s my big quiz about nothing.

You guys actually did better than nothing, so well done.

What a relief. Finally, a quiz for us.

We’re delighted to take your quiz questions.

If you’ve got a puzzle or riddle for us, just send it an email to words at waybirdradio.org.

And of course, we want to talk to you about language.

Got an idea? Got a thought? Got a dilemma?

877-929-9673 or spread it all out on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Vivian. I’m calling in from Seattle.

Hi, Vivian. Welcome to the show.

So, you know, like everyone who does a ton of computer work, most of my days are spent in meetings in a corporate setting.

And half of these are these recurring meetings that either I have to schedule myself or that, you know, other schedules with me.

And so my question concerns how we refer to the reoccurrence because it’s been bugging me ever since I had my first corporate job.

And so the specific question I have, and I’d love to understand your thoughts about the system here as well, is how can biweekly simultaneously mean twice a week and every other week?

Yeah, that can cause problems in the workplace, right?

It definitely can.

And I’m just completely confused how these numeric prefixes work with our common measures of time to mean what they mean.

And, you know, it seems like at least in the company I work for, biweekly meanings are really common and we’ve taken it to mean every other week.

But to me, it definitely sounds like it should be twice a week.

Yeah, biweekly is just one of those words that we call a skunked word because different people can take it different ways and it’s just so confusing.

If you want to get technical about it, when you’re modifying an adverb of time and you’re using the prefix by, which means two, that time interval should be doubled.

So if you’re having a biweekly meeting, that occurs one time every two weeks.

And a bi-monthly meeting takes place once every two months.

But the best thing to do is just to say exactly what it is, you know, twice a month or every two weeks or something like that.

Because bi-weekly is just right, Grant.

I mean, it’s just a skunk term.

Yeah, absolutely.

You’re just inviting confusion from new employees or people outside vendors or new partners working with the company.

I mean, if you have to keep explaining this particular usage to everyone, it’s just going to cause problems.

Or say semi-weekly or semi-monthly, just avoid the bi-weekly altogether.

Yeah, Grant raises a good point.

Even if you’re using it consistently within your company, somebody else from the outside might not get it and might show up for a meeting when they shouldn’t have or miss one.

You know, if you’re talking about the prefix semi, it means that the interval of time should be cut in half.

So a semi-monthly meeting is going to be held twice a month, cutting the month in half.

But the best thing to do is just to say specifically when that meeting is.

Totally. And I actually work as a designer and primarily working on, you know, apps and websites.

And so something that’s really important to me when I’m designing all these screens is, like, how do you label things and what are the instructions?

And I noticed that, you know, in, like, the email program, like, Outlook that lets you schedule meetings, they’re just very clear that it’s about, like, the specific measure of time.

Like you said, Martha and Grant, which is, like, every two weeks or, like, every other day or rather than using these numeric prefixes, which can be so confusing.

Right.

It’s a shame that we don’t have good shorthand for this, but again, spelling it out with more words in this case is worth it.

Absolutely.

That makes a ton of sense.

And you know how in the corporate setting, everyone just loves to make very short, snappy communication.

And we love our jargon, but it totally gets in the way sometimes, as you said, especially with newer people.

And especially working with co-workers from across the world, right?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, definitely.

Yeah, thank you so much for answering my question.

And I just wanted to say I especially love when you two bring us really interesting sayings from other languages around the world.

They just paint these really vivid pictures, and, you know, they’re my favorite part of the show.

So thank you so much.

Oh, really?

We’ll try to do more of that just for you, Vivian.

We will.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Okay, thanks, Vivian.

877-929-9673.

We’re still hearing from listeners about their favorite independent bookstore names, and one of them came from Chatham, Massachusetts.

Patty Linder wrote us about a bookstore that’s been there for 40 years now.

It’s called The Yellow Umbrella.

That reminds me of a children’s bookstore that was here in San Diego for a long time, The Yellow Book Road.

Oh, that’s so sweet.

It was a lovely little place that moved from place to place until the pressures of the market finally took them down.

877-929-9673.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Melinda Blanchard calling from the eastern shore of Virginia.

Ooh, nice. Hi, Melinda. Welcome.

Well, since I moved here five years ago, I’ve noticed that any time somebody local asks where I’m from, I tell them New Jersey and they say, oh, you’re a come here.

And I’m just curious if that is something that is just here or if that phrase is used in other areas of the country.

And sometimes it’s not a good thing.

Oh, really?

Tell us more about that.

That’s the way I feel.

So for the rest of the country, kind of paint a picture of where you are exactly in the state.

We’re on the peninsula. Virginia has two parts, which a lot of people don’t know.

The Delmarva Peninsula, we are on the east side of the Chesapeake Bay.

Gotcha. Very good. Gotcha.

And so you’ve been there how long now?

About five years.

And when they say you’re a come here, do you feel offended?

It depends on the tone.

I’m getting used to it now.

But at the beginning, I was like, what?

It’s contextual, right?

Yes, exactly.

Sometimes it’s just a term for somebody who wasn’t born there and somebody, sometimes it’s a little disparaging.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

Okay.

And they say that directly to you?

Yeah, that’s the question.

Is it behind your back or to you?

Oh, you’re coming.

Oh, no, no, no.

They’ll say it to your face, yeah.

Well, it’s kind of been ongoing since at least the 1960s and probably earlier.

The term come here has existed for outsiders who’ve come to that part of Virginia, usually for vacation or second homes or third homes even, and not just that part of the peninsula, but all along both sides of the Chesapeake Bay in eastern Virginia and the surrounding inlets and all the different kind of, along the rivers and so forth, all the different kind of places there.

Author John Dos Passos was one of the Come Hears at one point and lived on the west side of the Chesapeake Bay.

West side, okay.

If you’re not a Come Hearer, you’re probably a born here or a from here, although there are also Come Back Hears, natives who have moved back.

Oh, I hadn’t heard that one.

Some of these are jokey terms. I don’t know how widely they’re used.

But the question is how long you have to live there to become a from here.

Do you have any idea? Did anybody tell you how long you’re going to stay a come here?

No, I have no idea.

I do know that one of the people that refers to me as a come here, you know, with the disparaging remark, was actually from Connecticut.

So I don’t know that that’s really fair.

But I don’t know the answer to that question.

Well, there’s one bit of actually federal testimony from former Virginia governor and U.S. Senator Chuck Robb about how long one had to live in Virginia to overcome having lived in Michigan.

It was a bit jokey.

He says, well, there are parts of Virginia where you know you have to have eight generations buried in the local county before you are referred to as anything but a come here.

And there’s a notation left.

So eight generations buried.

So that’s from a former Virginia governor and senator.

So that tells you something.

That’s so interesting.

I will check that out.

I’m not aware of this term being used anywhere else besides southeastern Virginia.

Are you?

Yeah, that’s right.

Yeah.

I mean, there are terms in other parts of the world for people who come from other places, but I think the term come here is pretty much localized to that part of the country.

Yeah, it looks like it.

I have never seen it anywhere else.

All of my reference works and all of my searching and variety of different periodicals only ever have turned it up in reference to Eastern Virginia.

So you’re special.

Well, and there are a lot of us now, but thank you.

Thank you for that.

Thanks so much, Melinda.

Okay, take care. Bye-bye.

Yeah, there’s such rich and wonderful language there in that area of the Chesapeake Bay.

And Delmarva.

I can’t wait for more calls from everyone there.

Do call us with your wonderful language, 877-929-9673, or talk to Martha and me on email, words@waywordradio.org, or tell us everything on Twitter @wayword.

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mark calling in from the Chicago area.

So my question is, when did a forward slash become a backslash?

I think I know what you mean by that, but will you explain?

Yes.

So frequently when listening to radio or podcasts and there are advertisements where somebody wants to send you to their website, they will say, you know, for more information, visit www.website.com backslash such and such, you know, to direct you to a specific page.

And to me, the thing that it should be that they should be saying is forward slash, not backslash.

But I’m open to being told that I’m wrong.

All right. Why are you why are you noticing this?

I mean, are you in a background where this is particularly apparent to you?

I mean, do you work in tech? Are you a computer programmer or something like that?

I’m in my mid 30s, but I’ve been programming for probably 25 years.

You know, my friends and I were teaching each other and ourselves how to program in, you know, basic and other up and coming languages when we were in middle school and grade school, late grade school.

And I’ve continued since then to go into the IT field and into information security.

So for me, there is a huge distinction between what is a backslash and a forward slash.

And I see that distinction observed in my circles and in tech circles, but then outside of that, it does not appear to be observed in the same way.

Yeah, I asked because I worked in IT for a long time, too.

And I remember teaching people how to use the Internet in the early 90s.

And it was a struggle, you know, it was a struggle to get people not even then not to call it a backslash.

And I’m like, you know, unless you’re talking about a Windows file path or you’re programming, it’s almost always a forward slash, you know, and definitely in Internet path files, path names or the Internet, you know, the URL, it’s a forward slash.

And I think it’s a really common thing to call it a backslash.

And there’s another reason why I think people do that.

And it’s that for some people, it doesn’t look like it’s moving back.

It looks like it’s moving forward.

They don’t think of it as leaning back.

Like on Stack Exchange, people are talking about it.

They’re bickering about it.

And some people say, no, it looks like it’s moving forward because it starts at the upper left and it goes forward to down to the right.

It’s going forward.

Yeah, I can get that.

But at the same time, to me, it looks like it’s leaning forward because it leans in the same direction that in penmanship, for example, you are taught to lean your letters to the right.

Bingo. Bingo. Yes. Mark, that’s it exactly.

So the mistake that they’re making is not thinking about when you learned to write, you start on the baseline.

This is a jargon from topography.

The baseline is where you begin to write your letters.

And both of these punctuation marks start on the baseline.

Imagine the word happy, H-A-P-P-Y.

The H and the A, they sit on top of the baseline.

But the letters P-P-Y, they have descenders.

These are those little legs that go below the baseline.

And only like the circles of the P and like the V part of the Y sit on that baseline.

So you have to start where the character begins the baseline before you start to think about what means forward and what means backward, right?

So the backward slash is clearly backward when you start at the baseline and go up and to the left, which is back.

And the forward slash clearly is up and to the right, which is forward because we’re a left to right language.

But when you’re hearing somebody talk about just giving an Internet address, they tend to say backslash at the end.

Is that what you’re saying?

Yeah.

It’s not a backslash.

Yeah.

Mark is right.

There’s no argument about it.

I mean, this isn’t one of those things like, well, maybe it’s a backslash.

It’s never a backslash.

It’s always a forward slash in an Internet address.

I wonder if it’s just easier to say backslash and it sounds like backsplash, like on a sync.

I mean, you know, forward slash, it’s kind of, you know.

It’s clunky.

Yeah, it’s clunky.

It’s more clunky, yeah.

Yeah, it’s more work.

Yeah, backslash is fluid and it’s got, you know, almost rhymes and it’s easy to say.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you’ve heard a lot of people say it, so it comes easier to the tongue.

Yeah.

I’m surprised that copy editors are not catching it, but it’s possible, I guess, that they are making a conscious decision to use the wrong word because it sounds better.

And they know that people will understand it.

And probably type the correct thing or the web browser will correct it for them.

Well, and in punctuation, it’s called a virgule too, right?

It can be.

That forward slash, yeah, which comes from a Latin word that means twig.

But maybe we can get people to say that, you know, give an Internet address and then say virgule.

But Martha, it’s complicated.

In Unicode, the characters call us solidus, which is a different thing altogether from mathematics.

So the name isn’t even a good guide.

Well, once we all have our cyber implants, it’ll all be clever.

Yeah.

I’m waiting for the chip in my lobe.

Hey, Mark, thanks so much for calling and sharing your experience.

Thank you guys for having me on.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

Call us, 877-929-9673.

You’re listening to A Way with Words, this show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Here’s a word worth reviving, respair. It’s R-E-S-P-A-I-R, respair.

And as a noun, respair means the return of hope after a period of despair. And as a verb, respair means to have hope again.

And both forms of this word are apparently modeled after their older etymological relative, as you can imagine, Grant, despair, which comes from the Latin sperare.

Meaning to hope. The Oxford English Dictionary lists only one citation each for the noun and the verb forms of despair, and they’re both from the early 15th century. So for some reason, the English language hung on to the word despair, but this other word, despair, is all but forgotten. So I think it’s high time we revived it. And I learned this word from a new book called The Cabinet of Calm, Soothing Words for Troubled Times. It’s by Paul Anthony Jones, and it’s a collection of 51 obscure words. It’s sort of a browsing book of words chosen to provide comfort and inspiration and peace of mind.

That sounds lovely. It sounds a good way to like balance your spirit or clean up your mood. Let me give you another one. Meliorism, M-E-L-I-O-R-I-S-M. It’s the belief that the world or society may be improved and suffering alleviated through rightly directed human effort. That’s the OED’s definition of it. And it’s as opposed to optimism or pessimism, meliorism, like ameliorate.

Oh, yeah. So related to ameliorate to make better.

Yes, yes, yes, or words like mejor in Spanish. Another one I really like is cultillation, C-U-L-T-E-L-L-A-T-I-O-N, cultillation. It comes from Latin cultelis, which means knife, and it’s the solution of a problem by dealing with it piecemeal. And it’s a term that comes from surveying. And I thought that was so cool. You know, you’ve got this big problem or this big piece of land to survey, and it’s too difficult to do it all at once. So you break it up into little pieces, cultillation.

Oh, and that’s the best advice, isn’t it? So often a big amorphous problem broken down into pieces suddenly seems manageable.

Yes. When you can turn a problem into a list of to-dos, you’re like, wait, that wasn’t that hard after all.

Yeah.

Yeah, you do one, and then you get encouraged, and you do another. Cultillation. Anyway, the book is called The Cabinet of Calm, Soothing Words for Troubled Times by Paul Anthony Jones.

Correct. Our listeners often send us words that they appreciate, that bring them joy, or they consider their favorites. We know you’ve got those. We’d love to hear the words that bring you joy or give you optimism. 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org or tell us on Twitter @wayword.

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Elena from Richmond, Kentucky.

What’s going on, Elena?

So my friend and I have this debate that’s been going on for six months.

What?

She said, I know, six months. Can you believe that?

I know. And neither of us, neither of us will give in to that the other one is right. So I thought the only one that can settle this is you all.

Oh, boy. And she’s here with me in the room.

Oh. Because I knew that she would never believe when I tell her that she’s going to be wrong about this.

No pressure there.

Okay.

No. All right, let’s hear it. Lay it out for us.

So my friend says that when there is no one else to blame, she gets blamed for things. So she says that she is the fault default. And I said, no, you’ve got it backwards. If you are the one that always gets blamed for things, then you are the default fault. And so we just will not let this go. Because I’m thinking, okay, like a computer, you go back to your default settings. It’s the original kind of go to everything. And she says I’m wrong. She thinks that she is default default. Six months we’ve been going at this.

Oh, my gosh. So you’re blaming her for being wrong then.

Well, that’s it. I’m always blaming her. This is all about her being wrong, and you’re still blaming her.

That’s right. We have a bet going on.

Whoever wins, the loser has to pay for the next Airbnb for us to get away from the real world with this pandemic.

So I need her to pay for the trip.

Oh, man.

You sound like good friends, equally stubborn, equally persistent.

Well, now, wait.

She’s there with you six feet away?

Yes, she is.

Oh, let’s talk to her.

What is her name?

Erin.

Erin.

Erin.

Yep.

So I’m going to put her on.

Okay.

Hello, this is the default speaking.

Hi, Erin.

All right.

Let’s hear your side of this.

Did she represent your side well?

It’ll do.

It’ll do.

All right, let’s hear your thinking.

Yeah, so you get blamed for everything.

If anybody’s going to be blamed, it’s got to be Erin, you know?

It’s like when you have a kid and you make commitments and then you don’t want to go later.

And then you decide, the kid, you know, oh, the baby didn’t sleep today.

Or, oh, the baby won’t wake up from the nap or whatever.

That baby becomes the fault default, right?

It kind of gets you out of things and problems.

But now it’s like I’m the fault default as I’ve grown up because I’m the one like people like, oh, who do we blame?

Let’s blame Aaron.

Oh, gosh.

If you replace the word fault, so we’re all agreed that the word default is okay here, right?

Right.

Default means the thing that you fall back on automatically before you consider other options, right?

Right.

Like it’s the baseline setting before you change things.

Sure.

Okay.

If you replace the word fault, though, with excuse or blame, does your version still work?

Excuse or blame.

So blame default.

Well, without trying, I have to say absolutely.

Or excuse default.

Yeah.

Now, try Elena’s.

Does default blame?

Like, if I say Erin is the default blame or Erin is the default excuse, does that work?

Both.

This is the problem that we’re having.

If I could get all four of us on the line here, we could all talk about the problem is that we’ve got two nouns behaving differently in two separate phrases.

So in fault-default, default is a noun, and fault is a noun behaving adjectivally.

So it’s basically attributive noun.

And in default-fault, fault is a noun, and default is behaving attributively, adjectivally.

So it’s behaving like an adjective.

And so this is where you’re kind of getting confusion here.

Martha, I don’t know about you.

For me, I think fault-default is the better choice.

You know what, honestly?

Can you say that louder in one more time?

Yeah, because fault sounds like something that’s wrong with somebody.

And so if you’re saying default fault, it’s not the same as saying the person at fault is always the default.

I have it in my head.

I just can’t explain it very well, but I agree with Grant.

Fault default is where I would go.

What?

So who’s was that?

This is Erin.

Erin, you were correct.

I’m the fault default.

Yeah, okay.

Oh my gosh.

I get a free trip.

All right, girls, text in the mail.

Oh, this is the best pandemic day ever.

2020 got way better.

That’s sad.

That’s really sad.

I hope your friendship withstands this drama.

We have to live in the moment, Martha.

That’s true.

We do.

And, you know, I guess your only hope is that we do have opinionated listeners.

And I could hear somebody, you know, maybe calling in or writing us.

Chastising us for being wrong.

Yeah.

So there may be a thin sliver of hope.

There’ll be six months of argument in our email inbox.

I guarantee it.

So thanks a lot.

Nice.

Welcome to our world.

Oh, my gosh.

All right.

You all got to get out more.

You all got to take care.

And I hope everyone stops blaming Erin because she was right for once.

Yeah.

Tell us how that trip goes.

Yeah, finally.

Oh, we’ll let you know.

And we’ll let you know our new dilemma.

Okay.

You all are great.

Thanks a bunch.

And just decide who’s navigating to the Airbnb before you go.

Bye-bye.

That’s right.

Take care now.

Oh, word.

Bye-bye.

Take care, y’all.

Take care.

Oh, Grant.

You know, part of this is that I have this native speaker’s instinct that fault default is right.

Yeah, kind of your native speaker’s intuition on language kind of gets in the way, right?

But the reason I went to replacing fault with blame or excuse is because if you do that, it becomes a little clearer.

So blame default sounds a lot better than default blame because she’s not a blame.

She’s a default, right?

Right.

So if you treat that last word in both of these phrases as a noun, when we’re talking about Erin, she isn’t a fault.

We would never call her a fault.

We would call her a default.

And so it kind of works out better as blame default.

She is the thing that the blame defaults to.

Yes.

Every time there’s somebody to blame, the default is Aaron, right?

So blame default works better, therefore fault default works better.

Yeah.

Blame functioning as an adjective.

Yeah.

But before we mess this up further, let’s just give the phone number and go with another call.

Please agree with us.

877-929-9673.

Here’s a wonderful word, worldcraft.

It’s a collective term for the unique skills, wisdom, and experience that an older person has amassed in their lifetime.

Worldcraft.

Worldcraft.

Yeah.

That’s nice.

Isn’t that nice?

It was around in Old English, and then it sort of laid dormant for a long time, and then was revived at least a little bit in the 19th century.

Worldcraft.

Oh, I do like that.

That’s a nice summary of everything that you know.

Yeah, worldcraft.

I could see that being used in obituaries or eulogies.

Yeah, or video games.

War of Worldcraft.

877-929-9673.

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Nick Spiker and I’m calling from San Antonio, Texas.

Welcome, Nick. What’s up?

What’s on your mind, Nick?

Yeah, so I wanted to ask about a word, kiffin.

It’s a word my dad used to use when we were younger.

Maybe I was five or six.

My brother was a little older.

And on the weekends, he would make us lunch.

And he would say, like, hey, we’re having Tiffin.

And we’d be like, yay, we always loved it.

But it would be kind of a meal that he would put together just with whatever was available,

Like leftover spaghetti or just carrot sticks

Or just kind of a mishmash of things collected from the kitchen and the cupboards

And put together on plates.

And I’ve never heard the word again.

He doesn’t know where it came from.

So I was curious if you knew anything about Tiffin

And what the history of that word is.

Leftover spaghetti and carrot sticks.

That sounds like a meal.

That’s so interesting, particularly for kids.

That’s not a bad one for kids.

Get the vegetables in there, get the carbs in there.

Not too much complaining.

All right, let me ask you some questions about your dad.

Did he spend any time in South Asia?

I don’t think so.

He was in the military, but no, I don’t believe he was ever deployed.

He’s very well read, though.

Okay, does he read Kipling?

Maybe, if that’s possible.

Okay.

Does he spend any time in Indian culture or Sri Lankan or Bangladeshi culture?

Not that I know of, no.

Not that I know of.

He’s a big war history buff.

Okay.

Does he study the British during World War II or World War I or the British Empire?

Yeah, definitely World War II.

I think he’s well-versed in that.

Okay.

The reason I’m asking all these questions is it’s strange that an American knows this word just for daily use because it generally means a light snack or a lunch, a light lunch, not necessarily eaten at mealtime.

So it might be just as you put it, a little bit of this and a little bit of that, although at times it’s been described in various writings as something more elaborate.

The Oxford English Dictionary says a light midday meal or a luncheon.

Other resources I have, I have a dictionary, a couple of dictionaries of Indian English.

One of them quotes an older text that talks about the meals being so elaborate that people would overeat.

They would just use it to pass the time, kind of stuffing themselves in between meals.

Another one says that the tiffin would be grilled fowls, mutton chops, cold meats, and sometimes curry and rice.

So just really kind of these elaborate meals.

Tiffin is not only the name of the meal, but it’s also the name even now in India for the name of the metal container that holds the food.

So it’s kind of a stack of circular lunchboxes, so to speak, and you can carry them.

And so you have these tiffin wallahs, these guys who bring the food from these restaurants, more or less, these cafeterias to all the offices.

You pre-order your food, your tiffin, and they bring them to you every single day for lunch.

And they just carry these large cylinders, these stacks of these tiffins to all the establishments,

And then they come fetch them later.

So those are two different meanings of tiffin.

And we’re spelling this T as in Thomas, I, F as in Frank, F as in Frank, I-N, right?

That’s right, tiffin.

Yeah, that’s how I always imagined it.

So that’s officially an Indian word then.

Yeah, but it comes from English originally.

So it’s borrowed into Indian English from an English verb tiff, meaning to eat or to drink, or to drink slowly.

Oh, maybe from England being there, from colonizing India.

The English dominating the Indian subcontinent for so long and trying to rule it.

Very interesting. I wonder how he started to use that word.

Well, that’s what I was asking. If he studies war, the British and their experience in the subcontinent is something that many people are interested in reading about war often look into because there are so many successes and failures there.

There’s so much to be learned from arrogance and hubris and just different moments of valor and different moments of cowardice.

There’s so much to be discovered there when you look at the two sides and the way they succeeded and failed.

So often you’ll just run across these great descriptions of the two cultures clashing and learning from each other or rejecting each other.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if Tiffin came up in his reading.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Well, thank you so much for your help.

That’s awesome.

Yeah, sure.

Thanks for calling.

I really appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

Now I have to go get Indian food, Martha.

Well, before you do that, there’s no connection with the idea of Tiff being a little coral, right?

No.

As far as we know, there’s no connection to the idea of Tiff being a little coral, no.

So it’s just the two Tiffins.

One is the metal tin that holds the lunch, and there’s the Tiffin that is the lunch itself, or the small light meal itself.

And this goes back at least 200 years.

Now I have a word for those lunches I throw together.

Carrot sticks and spaghetti.

Oh, we call them American tapas in my house.

Oh, that’s nice.

I like that.

American tapas.

Well, talk to us, 877-929-9673, or send your stories about language to words@waywordradio.org.

Thanks to senior producer Stefanie Levine, editor Tim Felten, and production assistant Rachel Elizabeth Weisler.

You can send us messages, subscribe to the podcast and newsletter, and catch up on hundreds of past episodes at waywordradio.org.

Our toll-free line is always open in the U.S. and Canada, 877-929-9673, or email us words@waywordradio.org.

A Way with Words is an independent production of Wayword, Inc., a nonprofit supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language.

Many thanks to Wayword board member and our friend Bruce Rogow for his help and expertise.

Thanks for listening. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Until next time, goodbye.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.